


What Is Remembered Fondly Lingers On

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, As If Something Like Death Would Stop Molly, Eventual Happy Ending, Failed resurrection, Gen, Guess Who Downloaded The Lingering Soul Class?, Spoilers for Campaign 2 Episode 26, Tags To Be Added Later When I Figure Out Where In The Hells This Is Going, Unwitting Possession, barfights, post episode 26
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-11 05:19:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15308343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: “I’m sorry.”Beau heard the words of the cleric as if they were coming from miles away. All she could do was stare down at Molly, still lifeless, eyes still open. They had refused to close even when weighted down with coins, and there were superstitions about that. When a corpse wouldn’t shut their eyes it meant that their spirit wasn’t at rest, could never pass on, had unfinished business on the Material Plane. Beau would have thought that would have made the resurrection easier.Just because the resurrection failed, doesn't mean something wasn't left behind.





	1. That Which Was Thought Gone Still Lingers

**Author's Note:**

> Blaming @dathen for this one. It's the very best blame.

“I’m sorry.”

Beau heard the words of the cleric as if they were coming from miles away. All she could do was stare down at Molly, still lifeless, eyes still open. They had refused to close even when weighted down with coins, and there were superstitions about that. When a corpse wouldn’t shut their eyes it meant that their spirit wasn’t at rest, could never pass on, had unfinished business on the Material Plane. Beau would have thought that would have made the resurrection easier.

“I do not know how such magics work. Can you try again? If we bring you more diamonds, can you—“ Caleb, his voice so very steady, so controlled. Beau felt Frumpkin rub against her leg before moving to gently butt against Molly’s hand, as if demanding to be petted. Caleb had made Frumpkin a cat again, because though an owl was useful, a cat was far more comforting, and they needed what little comfort they could get to keep from falling apart.

“I’m sorry,” the cleric said again. “Once a resurrection fails, it takes magics far more powerful than what I possess to bring the soul back. It is said that—“

The cleric’s voice was a hum fading into the distance. Beau had no memory of getting up, of leaving the cleric’s hut, of walking down the path that lead further into the woods. She was vaguely aware that it wasn’t safe to be by herself in Shady Creek Run, that it left her open to be mugged or beaten or worse. It was a lawless place, which meant there were plenty of criminals, yes, but it had also meant there were clerics there that worshipped gods that the Empire did not approve of. There had been only one cleric of the Moonweaver powerful enough to try and bring Molly back, but that should have been enough. Nott had easily stolen a diamond valuable enough for the ritual, and Beau had thought that luck had been on their side, that everything was going to work out fine. But then, she had thought that before, hadn’t she? And look where that had gotten them.

“Beau? Hey! You shouldn’t be out here alone!”

Beau just kept walking as Keg ran up to her, kept looking straight ahead. She didn’t know where she was going. Had she ever?

A hand on her arm, and Beau whirled around, fists raised.

Keg hurriedly took a few steps back, hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, hey, it’s just me!”

Beau lowered her arms slowly, but her hands were still clenched into fists.

“Your— everyone else is heading back to the inn. We should head back there too. Figure out what to do next.”

Beau just blinked at Keg, words withering and dying in her throat. Her vision was blurry and going gray at the edges. When was the last time she had slept, or eaten something? Before the fight, probably, and how long ago had that been? Hours? Days? Caleb would be able to tell her. Caleb always knew what time it was.

“Listen. I know this doesn’t make anything better, but— I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Yeah, everyone is real fucking sorry.” The words come up and out of Beau like vomit, burning her throat on the way up. She gestured back towards the way she had come, towards the cleric’s hut. “ _She’s_ sorry, _you’re_ sorry, _I’m_ sorry, but so what? He’s still dead!” She took a step towards Keg and watched Keg take a step back, one hand hovering near the handle of her axe. “He’s _dead_ and three of my friends are _gone_ and at the rate people are disappearing or dying I’m going to wake up tomorrow to find Caleb or Nott with their throats slit or some shit and then it’s just going to be _me_ left and—“ Beau shivered violently, both from emotion and from the fact that she was cold, had been cold for hours now. She could see her breath hanging in the air.

“I’m—“ Beau could see the word ‘sorry’ start to shape itself on Keg’s lips before the dwarf thought better of it. “Fuck. I’m no good at this. Just come back to the inn with me, all right? I’ll stay out of your way after that if you want, but I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

_She’s got a point._

Beau whirled around, because that had been _Molly’s_ voice she had heard. There was no one behind her, of course there wasn’t, especially not him.

“Hey, are you okay? Fuck, that’s stupid, of course you’re not okay.”

Beau turned back to Keg, anger dissolving under a wave of confusion. “I thought I heard something.”

_Wait, you heard that?_

Beau blinked hard, then ran a hand over her face. “I’m— more tired than I thought I was. You’re right, we should go back to the inn.” Gods, she needed a drink, or maybe just to lie down and sleep for a hundred years. Maybe she’d wake up and all this would be a bad dream.

***********

Beau wasn’t sure what she was eating, just that she _was_ eating, even though chewing was an effort. Drinking was far easier, though the hot, spiced wine did nothing to make her feel warmer. She shivered, fingers clenching around the tankard, and looked up at Caleb, who was talking, maybe had been talking for quite a while.

“…asked for Molly to be—be buried where we could find his—“ Caleb swallowed hard, his eyes red and swollen. “Where we could find his body again if we needed to. Some of the higher magics don’t require the body for resurrection, but some do.”

Beau was so tired that the panic she suddenly felt in her chest didn’t even feel like hers. “But what if he—“

“We paid for someone to check on the grave every day. Just in case.”

Beau felt relief, cold and distant.

“We left his swords with him. The old ones.” Nott took a very long drink from her tankard. Her golden eyes shone dully, without luster. “We kept his really shiny sword. And his coat. I thought he wouldn’t want it under the ground, getting dirty. Even though there’s blood on it already.” She swiped a hand across her eyes. “It’s stupid, I know.”

_It’s not stupid, Nott, I promise. Beau, if you can hear me, tell Nott she’s not stupid._

Beau flinched at the sound of Molly’s voice and said nothing. She was suffering from a hallucination brought on by grief and lack of sleep. She wasn’t going to indulge it. She was going to drink, and sleep, and when she woke up that voice would be gone.

_Shit. Maybe I’m just talking to myself. I don’t know how this works. I don’t know what’s happening._

“Beau? You’re shaking.” Caleb looked at her with concern.

 _He looks awful._ Molly’s voice sounded worried. _When was the last time he got some sleep?_

“Just tired,” Beau said, standing up from the table, teeth chattering. Fuck she was cold. Why the hell couldn’t she get warm? She took a step forward, swaying a little.

“Need some help getting to your room?” Keg asked. If her tone hadn’t been so somber, it could have been a pick up line. “Looks like you’re having a little trouble there.”

“I’m fine,” Beau protested weakly, right before staggering into a burly looking human and spilling his drink. Drunk and tired and cold as she was, she still had the presence of mind to duck his swinging fist as he shouted at her.

Beau felt herself grin, the adrenaline cutting through grief and exhaustion for a moment. It was almost a relief, the pain in her knuckles as her fist met flesh when she answered with a swing of her own. Then everyone was shouting and throwing punches at each other and things dissolved into a proper brawl.

_For fuck’s sake Beau, trust you to get into a bar fight when I’m not there to join in the fun._

“SHUT UP, MOLLY!” Beau shouted as she slammed her fist into someone’s face.

_You_ **_can_ ** _hear me!_

“Of course I can fucking hear you!” Beau yelled as she punched someone else in the stomach. “You won’t stop talking!”

A large fist swung at her face and time slowed as Beau raised arms heavy with drink and exhaustion to block the blow. Adrenaline could only do so much, and it had been a hard few days. She braced herself for the impact— and blinked in shock at a blue light that filled her vision for a split second. She registered the feeling of no longer being cold, and the surprised look on the face of the man in front of her as he suddenly pulled his punch and turned to attack someone else.

“The fuck?” Beau said even as she finally whipped out her staff and cracked her once would be attacker upside the head with it.

The man’s eyes rolled up into his head as he crumpled to the floor, but _something_ was still standing in his place. No, not something. Someone.

Mollymauk Tealeaf, translucent and glowing with a faint blue light, looked down at the unconscious man and then back up at Beau, who could only stare in stunned silence.

“Hey now, I was using that.”


	2. Some Lingering Guilt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first line of this chapter is not mine, it is a direct quote of what my braintwin Cin texted me when he got to the part of the episode where Molly died, and I asked him for permission to use it here. Also special thanks for him being a calming influence while I was being a mess of anxiety and bad brain weather.

Mollymauk Tealeaf died as they lived, bleeding profusely and unapologetic in the face of others. He had died with his eyes open, staring up at his murderer, and though Molly had not wanted to die, he had to admit it had been a good death, if such a thing existed.

There had been darkness, after. No pain, no warmth, but no cold either. Just the dark, and the lingering spark of a soul that was Molly, clinging to the thought that there was something he needed to do. He had to go back, but there was no direction in the dark, and he had no voice to plead with. He had been alone. It was his only memory of being alone, and he hated it as much as he had always feared he would.

Silence. There had been voices, muffled and distant, like people talking in the next room of a busy inn. It made him think of the nights of sharing a room with Fjord, hearing Jester and Beau talking and laughing in the next room while everyone else had been trying to sleep. The memories had come back to him in a rush, then. Yasha and Jester and Fjord taken by slavers. Beau and Caleb and Nott fighting their captors alongside Molly. Had they lived? Had they gotten away? Had they freed everyone, against all odds? Had his sacrifice been enough?

The voices had faded, to be replaced by new voices. There had been a figure wearing a porcelain mask, her hair and robes somehow even darker than the darkness surrounding him. There had been a young girl with skin as blue as summer’s twilight and with hair and eyes that shone with the full moon’s light. There had been an argument, or at least it had sounded like an argument, the words unintelligible to Molly but the cadence of speech and the gestures of the two people making it clear that some sort of disagreement had been taking place. Molly couldn’t tell who had won, if either of them had, but it had been the girl who had stepped forward towards him, her hands large enough to encompass all that was left of him, holding him close and saying something in a voice that had sounded as if moonlight and shadows had been made into a crystal, and that crystal had been given speech.

_< She has _ **_her_ ** _champion, I don’t see why I can’t have mine. This compromise is not what either of us want, but it is the best that can be done, for now. >_

Then everything had been bright and loud, just like after he had crawled out of his grave for the first time, except his hands hadn’t ached and there hadn’t been the taste of dirt on his tongue. He had felt himself moving, and it had been like the dreams he used to have, of being someone else, a passenger in someone else’s body, with no control over its actions. It was only when the body had raised its hands that he had realized whose eyes he was looking out of. He had known those hands, dark skinned with blue wrappings, bruises on the edge of the knuckles, dirt under the fingernails. Beau. He was in Beau.

One barfight later, after the screaming and the disbelief and the quick relocation of the entire group to an entirely _different_ inn, of passing Molly off as some sort of magical illusion and of course not a ghost, (Caleb had managed the deception easily, his voice and hands steady as he had spoken), Molly had found himself in a room with the four of them, telling them what little he knew. Everyone but Keg had stared at him, their eyes sunken and dark shadowed from lack of sleep. Keg had only spared him a glance once and then looked down at her hands.

“You were inside me,” Beau said with a shiver, and Molly couldn’t tell if it was from revulsion or the fact that his presence seemed to make the air around him colder. He remembered her saying something similar not so very long ago in Hupperdook, after he had used his magic to try and remove the alcohol from her blood. It had almost been funny then. It wasn’t now.

“Not on purpose,” Molly said. “I don’t know how that happened, but I won’t let it happen with you again, if I can help it. I don’t even know how I got out, except I saw that asshole about to hit you and I remember just getting so _angry_ and wanting to stop him. And then I was in _him_ instead.”

“There are stories,” Caleb said quietly, “of angry spirits possessing people, making them turn on friends and allies. This seems similar, but not the same. In the stories, the spirits can’t speak and possess little reasoning.”

“You couldn’t like, hear my thoughts while you were in there, could you?” Beau asked.

“No!” Molly said quickly. “I mean, I didn’t _try_ or anything, I don’t know if that’s even something I _could_ do if I wanted, but I wouldn’t have done that to you. For fuck’s sake Beau, I know I can be an asshole sometimes—“

“I didn’t think you _would_ ,” Beau said, then shook her head. “Fuck, maybe I did, I don’t know. I was just asking if you _could_. Like, if you could possess people and learn their secrets, that’d be useful, you know? We need all the tricks we can, if we’re going up against Lorenzo and his gang again.”

“We were just waiting for you to— come back, before we made any more plans.” Nott said. She took a long drink from her flask. “We need something, you know, better than the last one.” There was guilt on her face, and on Caleb’s and Beau’s and especially on Keg’s, and that wasn’t fair, not at all.

“So our last plan didn’t survive contact with the enemy,” Molly said with a shrug. “And neither did I. These things happen,” he said casually, because how could he be upset at them when he only had himself to blame? “It’s not your fault, what happened to me, is that clear?”

They didn’t believe him, Molly could see that clear as day in the expressions of three people who looked too exhausted to cry and Keg, who looked only slightly more well rested and who had barely known him at all and who looked the most guilty out of any of them.

“Fuck this. I need a drink,” Keg said, standing up suddenly, not looking at Molly or anyone else.

“Keg? Can you wait a second?” Molly asked, but Keg kept walking, closing the door behind her, and Molly didn’t think, just walked _through_ the door in pursuit. It was like wading through swamp mud, but he was soon out in the hallway, following Keg, and it was only when he went to put a hand on her shoulder and it went _through_ her that he realized that being a ghost or whatever he was meant he couldn’t touch people. There was a lot of things he couldn’t do anymore, but he didn’t have time to think about that at the moment.

Keg yelped and spun around, rubbing at her shoulder. “Shit, that’s cold!” She looked up at him, then looked away. “What do you want?”

“What happened, it wasn’t your fault, you know that, right? The others must have told you that.”

Keg snorted with disdain. “Of course they did. It almost sounded convincing. And don’t think just because you’re telling me the same that it makes me feel any better. A dead man’s words don’t carry any extra weight with me.” She looked up then, into his eyes. “It’s obvious those three care about you an awful lot. They spent time they could have used in freeing your _living_ friends to try and get you back, and that’s on me too. If I had spoken up sooner, if I hadn’t been so damn—“ She turned and and started walking away again.

“Keg, listen—“ Molly started walking after her, and stopped when she looked over her shoulder.

“Don’t follow me, Molly. I have enough ghosts haunting me. I don’t need you doing it too.”

There was nothing Molly could say to that, at least, nothing that wouldn’t involve profanity, and nothing Keg would want to listen to anyway. He wanted a drink. Except he couldn’t. No more drinking. No more smoking. He didn’t feel hungry or thirsty either. Mostly what he felt was, well, empty.

“Molly?”

Molly made sure he didn’t look as panicked as he felt before turning around to face Caleb, who was standing in the hallway behind him, Nott asleep in his arms.

“I know this… situation is not ideal, and I promise you we _will_ fix this.” Caleb looked up into Molly’s eyes for a long moment. “Still, I am glad that you are here in whatever way you can be, Mollymauk Tealeaf.”

Molly wanted to say that he was glad to be here as well, but he didn’t know how truthful that statement would have been. “I’m just wondering if there is anything else I can do, besides possess people,” he finally settled on. “I want to help as much as I can.”

“There are many stories about ghosts,” Caleb said with a yawn. “In the morning we can try to figure out what is fiction and what is fact.”

“Yes, in the morning.” Molly said, wishing he could take Caleb’s hand and squeeze it reassuringly. “Sleep well, Caleb.”

“You as well,” Caleb said softly before heading to his own room. After a second Molly realized that Caleb’s automatic reply brought up another point. Molly didn’t feel tired. He couldn’t even _sleep_ and have a break from consciousness for a few hours. Well, there was still one thing he could do.

Molly walked down the hallway, then kept walking through the wall and outside, where a light snow was starting to fall. He noticed that he could see just as well in darkness as he could in daylight now that he was dead, so that was useful at least. Snowflakes fell through him, he realized as he held out his hands. The sight was an interesting one, and distracted him for a few seconds until suddenly it felt like he _hit_ something. His head swung up, confused, because even though it felt like he was still walking, he wasn’t moving forward, even though nothing was in his way.

“What in the hells?” Molly swore as he tried even harder to keep walking, but it was as if something invisible was restraining him. He felt like a horse struggling against their reins, or a hunting dog that wanted off of his leash. “I can’t even go for a **_walk_**?!

After a few more moments of struggle, Molly finally gave up and began walking back to the inn as he tried to puzzle his way through the problem. It was as if his spirit had some sort of tether on it, which meant there had to be an anchor of some sort, and he found that if he concentrated, he could feel where that anchor was. He walked back through the walls of the inn, back down the hallway, and through a door he had walked through not too long ago.

Beau lay asleep, worry and exhaustion faded from her face and leaving her looking vulnerable in a way she rarely looked when she was awake. Molly stared at her. His anchor. The person his soul was bound to.

“I guess this is proof that the gods have a sense of humor,” Molly said, and started to laugh at the absurdity of the whole situation as Beau shivered and pulled the blanket a little more tightly around herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to apologize for this taking awhile. To be honest, the past few weeks have been absolutely horrible mental health wise, and I had decided that I probably wasn't going to update this again, and that I would put a note up giving a reason.
> 
> I just didn't want to write Molly unhappy and dead, especially after Taliesin specifically stated that Molly would *hate* being a Lingering Soul, because, well, he would. I wanted to write Molly as either alive, or if he was dead, at least being okay with being dead or having some quality time with our bird boy Vax or having crossover adventures with the Adventure Zone crew or *something.* 
> 
> Even this morning when I got a comment saying that the commentor was hoping for a chapter 2, I was still thinking about writing this fic up as a loss, even though I had Chapter 2 mostly written as of last week. But then I had a really long think about it, and I think I can make this work. I don't know how quickly this will update, but I think I can make it work.
> 
> I don't know if Molly is going to get a happy ending in canon, but godsdamn I am going to try and write him one.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I *did* pay for and download Matt's Lingering Soul class just so I could write this fic. Also for future reference. You know, just in case.
> 
> I'm angel-ascending over on Tumblr if y'all want to stop by and say hi or come cry at me about Thursday's episode.


End file.
